by Maya Angelou
—
My pattern had arrived from old exotic Texarkana. And I dressed for the trek downtown, and checked my hair, which was straightened to within an inch of its life and greased to desperation. From within the Store, I felt the threat of the sun but walked out into the road impelled by missionary zeal.
By the time I reached the pond and Mr. Willie Williams’ Dew Drop In, the plastic seemed to have melted to the exact shape of my feet, and sweat had popped through the quarter inch of Arrid in my armpits.
Mr. Williams served me a cold drink. “What you trying to do? Fry your brains?”
“I’m on my way to the General Merchandise Store. To pick up an order.”
His smile was a two-line checkerboard of white and gold. “Be careful they don’t pick you up. This sun ain’t playing.”
Arrogance and stupidity nudged me out of the little café and back on the white hot clay. I drifted under the shade trees, my face a mask of indifference. The skin of my thighs scudded like wet rubber as I walked deliberately by the alien white houses and on to my destination.
In the store the air lay heavily on the blades of two sluggish overhead fans, and a sweet, thick odor enveloped me at the cosmetic counter. Still, I was prepared to wander the aisles until the sun forgave our sins and withdrew its vengeance.
A tall saleswoman wearing a clerk’s smock confronted me. I tried to make room for her in the narrow corridor. I moved to my left, she moved to her right. I right, she left, we jockeyed a moment’s embarrassment and I smiled. Her long face answered with a smile. “You stand still and I’ll pass you.” It was not a request for cooperation. The hard mountain voice gave me an order.
To whom did she think she was speaking? Couldn’t she see from my still-white though dusty gloves, my starched clothes, that I wasn’t a servant to be ordered around? I had walked nearly three miles under a sun on fire and was neither gasping nor panting, but standing with the cool decorum of a great lady in the tacky, putrid store. She should have considered that.
“No, you stand still and I’ll pass around you,” I commanded.
The amazement which leaped upon her face was quickly pushed aside by anger. “What’s your name? Where you from?”
A repetition of “You stand still and I’ll pass around you” was ready on my tongue, when the pale woman who had taken my order slack-butted down the aisle toward us. The familiar face brought back the sympathy I had felt for her and I explained the tall woman into limbo with “Excuse me, here comes my salesgirl.”
The dark-haired woman turned quickly and saw her colleague approach. She put herself between us, and her voice rasped out in the quiet store: “Who is this?”
Her head jerked back to indicate me. “Is this that sassy Ruby Lee you was telling me about?”
The clerk lifted her chin and glanced at me, then swirled to the older woman. “Naw, this ain’t her.” She flipped the pages of a pad in her hand and continued, “This one’s Margaret or Marjorie or something like that.”
Her head eased up again and she looked across centuries at me. “How do you pronounce your name, gal? Speak up.”
In that moment I became rootless, nameless, pastless. The two white blurs buoyed before me.
“Speak up,” she said. “What’s your name?”
I clenched my reason and forced their faces into focus. “My name”—here I drew myself up through the unrevenged slavery—“is Miss Johnson. If you have occasion to use my name, which I seriously doubt, I advise you to address me as Miss Johnson. For if I need to allude to your pitiful selves, I shall call you Miss Idiot, Miss Stupid, Miss Fool or whatever name a luckless fate has dumped upon you.”
The women became remote even as I watched them. They seemed actually to float away from me down the aisle; and from watching their distant faces, I knew they were having trouble believing in the fact of me.
“And where I’m from is no concern of yours, but rather where you’re going. I’ll slap you into the middle of next week if you even dare to open your mouths again. Now, take that filthy pattern and stick it you-know-where.”
As I strode between the two women I was sheathed in satisfaction. There had been so few critical times when my actions met my approval that now I congratulated myself. I had got them told and told correctly. I pictured the two women’s mouths still open in amazement. The road was less rocky and the sun’s strength was weakened by my pleasure. Congratulations were in order.
There was no need to stop at Mr. Williams’ for a refreshing drink. I was as cool as a fountain inside as I headed home.
Momma stood on the porch facing the road. Her arms hung at her sides and she made no motions with her head. Yet something was wrong. Tension had distorted the statue straightness and caused her to lean leftward. I stopped patting myself on the back and ran to the Store.
When I reached the one-step porch, I looked up in her face. “Momma, what’s the matter?”
Worry had forced a deep line down either side of her nostrils past her stiffly held lips.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Coleman’s granddaughter, Miss June, just called from the General Merchandise Store.” Her voice quaked a little. “She said you was downtown showing out.”
So that’s how they described my triumph to her. I decided to explain and let her share in the glory. I began, “It was the principle of the thing, Momma—”
I didn’t even see the hand rising, and suddenly it had swung down hard against my cheek.
“Here’s your principle, young miss.”
I felt the sting on my skin and the deep ache in my head. The greatest hurt was that she didn’t ask to hear my side.
“Momma, it was a principle.” My left ear was clogged, but I heard my own voice fuzzily.
The hand didn’t surprise me the second time, but the same logic which told me I was right at the white store told me I was no less right in front of Momma. I couldn’t allow myself to duck the blow. The backhand swing came down on my right cheek.
“Here’s your principle.” Her voice had a far-away-tunnel sound.
“It was a principle, Momma.” Tears poured down my burning face, and ache backed up in my throat.
The hand came again and again each time I mumbled “principle,” and I found myself in the soft dust in front of the porch. I didn’t want to move. I never wanted to get up again.
She stepped off the porch and caught my arms. “Get up. Stand up, I say.”
Her voice never allowed disobedience. I stood, and looked at her face. It glistened as if she had just dashed a pan of water over her head.
“You think ’cause you’ve been to California these crazy people won’t kill you? You think them lunatic cracker boys won’t try to catch you in the road and violate you? You think because of your all-fired principle some of the men won’t feel like putting their white sheets on and riding over here to stir up trouble? You do, you’re wrong. Ain’t nothing to protect you and us except the good Lord and some miles. I packed you and the baby’s things, and Brother Wilson is coming to drive you to Louisville.”
That afternoon I climbed into a horse-drawn wagon, and took my baby from Momma’s arms. The baby cried as we pulled away, and Momma and Uncle Willie stood waving and crying good-bye.
CHAPTER 18
Momma’s intent to protect me had caused her to hit me in the face, a thing she had never done, and to send me away to where she thought I’d be safe. So again, the South and I had parted and again I was headed for the cool gray hills of San Francisco. I raged on the train that white stupidity could so dictate my movements and looked unsheathed daggers at every white face I saw.
If the tables could have turned at that instant, I would gladly have consigned every white person living and the millions dead to a hell where the devil was blacker than their fears of blackness and more cruel than forced starvation. But, powerless, I spent the time on the train entertaining the baby when I thought of it, and wondering if I would be met by a warrant for my arrest when I
returned to California.
The city didn’t even know I had been away, and Mother took me and the baby to a room in her new fourteen-room house as if I had just returned from a long-intended holiday.
I found a job as a short-order cook in a tiny greasy spoon. The men who ate there were defeated leftovers from the now-closed war plants. They slouched into the fifth-rate dingy diner hugging their distress.
The job paid very little and the atmosphere of despair that never lifted depressed me. I left the restaurant each afternoon feeling that the rancid cooking oil and the old men’s sadness had seeped into my pores and were crawling through my body.
One afternoon I went into a record shop across the street from the diner and found a woman who was friendly and warm behind the counter. She was white and thirtyish, and didn’t condescend to either my color or my youth. When I told her that I liked blues, she pulled out some old Columbia Blue Labels. I said that I also liked jazz, and she suggested recent Charlie “Bird” Parker releases. I let the music wash away the odors and moods of the restaurant, and I left the shop with more records than I could afford. I had agreed with her that I should start collecting the Dial records featuring Bird, Max Roach, Al Haig, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and others who she said were going to be the “masters.” Each payday I kept out enough money to pay my own way at Mother’s, and spent the rest on records and books.
Mother was unhappy that my job made me unhappy. She always knew her “daughter had great potential” and was determined that if she had anything to do with it, I was going to realize it.
Weeks later she and I sat in the dining room and picked and poked through the classifieds for my future.
I was nearly nineteen, had a baby, responsibilities and no real profession. I could cook Creole and was a fast, friendly cocktail waitress. Also I was qualified as an absentee madam, but I somehow felt that I simply had not yet “found out my niche” (I had just discovered that phrase and yo-yo’ed it around with frequent and gay abandon).
“Private secretary. If you could type fast enough and do shorthand.” Mother was serious. Her pretty face was lined with concentration. “Telephone operator, pays pretty good.”
I reminded her that we’d already been through that.
“Key punch. Stenographer. You need training, baby.”
She looked at me spot on and added, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
I didn’t dare remind her that everything I had done had been well done.
“What is Alice doing? What about Jean Mae, and the twins? What are they all doing? Going to college?” Her voice and round black eyes worried me for answers.
Jean Mae, the neighborhood’s sepia Betty Grable, had a job hopping cars at a popular drive-in. I hardly had the face, figure or sexuality to be taken in at that restaurant. Alice could be seen nightly whistling down Post Street and up Sutter, her young walk exaggerated,her thin voice insinuating the lone sailor into following three paces behind her to the nearest transient hotel.
The twins married twins, which seemed as appalling to me as streetwalking. I felt there was a closet incest about the whole thing.
The small percentage of classmates who went on to college had become unbearably stuck-up and boring. So I found no inspiration among my peers.
“Companion, Chauffeurette.” That I could do. I immediately set a film to flickering on my mind screen. In a snappy uniform, no cap, gray serge and British walker shoes, I drove a man around who was the spitting image of Lionel Barrymore. He always addressed me as “Johnson” and while we liked and respected each other, we took pains never to show it. Late nights, he would call me into the drawing room and I would stand at attention, easily.
“Johnson. Tomorrow’s a beaut.”
“Yes, sir?”
“We go up to the city, then back to the country club, then the city, then the farm. A little hard on you, I fear.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
“I could count on you to say that, Johnson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
Mother’s gaze followed her ringed fingers up and down the page.
“You’d have to live in and it doesn’t really pay enough for you to afford a full-time baby-sitter.” She flipped the paper closed.
“Take anything that looks like something. You can always quit. Or there’s a chance that you won’t rise to the challenge and you’ll be fired. But the only thing to remember is that ‘you were looking for a job when you found that one.’ So whoever fires you ain’t getting no cherry.” She got up and went into the kitchen.
“How about a Dubonnet”—ice already clucked against the sides of glasses—“with a twist of lemon? I’m going to fix myself a Scotch.”
When I was around ten in Arkansas, I saw a glamorous actress play a jaunty chauffeurette in a movie. She maneuvered an Oldsmobile with one hand and was as chic as a model. I looked at the paper again and thought about the chauffeuring job. A wisp of nostalgia floated in my heart. The uniform, the easy camaraderie with the staff, the asexuality with my boss, and peace. Just like the Army. Routine, honorable work, hail-fellows well met, good-hearted companions and fair-minded officers. The Army! Just the thing. The idea snap-saluted in my brain. The Army!
I bounded into the kitchen and nearly collided with Mother and her tray of gold and purple drinks. I had developed some grace, quite a lot when I kept my mind on being graceful, but in unguarded moments my body tended to respond giraffe-like to stimuli.
“Mother!” She had righted the threatened glasses and pushed past me for the dining room. “I’m going in the Army!”
She set down the Dubonnet. “You as a sergeant and the baby as a private?”
Her tongue was sharper than the creases in zoot pants and I knew better than to try to best her. I said nothing.
“What would be the value of becoming a WAC?” she asked.
“The Army has all those side benefits and I could learn a trade. There’s the G.I. Bill, and when you get out you can go back to school and buy a home at the same time.”
“Side benefits” had caused a glint in Mother’s eyes.
“Now”—she pushed the wine toward me—“now you have to consider if you’re serious. Because if you are, it would be like volunteering for jail. People tell you when to sleep, eat, wake up, work. Personally, I couldn’t do it in a million years.” Her face frowned revulsion. “But in a way the country would be helping you get a start in life.”
Behind her smooth beige forehead, deep thoughts were being turned over, examined and replaced or discarded.
“If you are serious and get in, we’ll talk to Mrs. Peabody about taking care of the baby. You could sign up for a two-year tour, save your money, and study languages and advanced typing.”
She was talking my future into shape.
“Try out for Officer Candidate School or Officers’ Training Corps. Nothing they could say to you but yes or no. And when you go down there, remember they need you as much as you need them.” She saw my disbelief and explained. “The U.S. Army needs nice colored girls, well raised from good families. That’s what I meant.” She reached for her lipstick tube (never far away). “Government is going to give you an education and a start in life and you’re going to give class to that uniform.”
“Mother, they would examine me, physically, and find out about the baby.”
“You don’t have stretch marks and because you breastfed, your breasts never got out of shape.” Her words nudged past indifference. “That’s not what you ought to be thinking of. No. Decide if you want the Army for two years. Away from your baby and family. Taking orders, and keeping your temper under wraps. That’s a decision no one can make for you nor help you make.”
She got up from the table and visited one of her flashiest smiles on me.
“I have a date now. We can talk more when you’re ready. Remember if you decide for the Army, I’ll support you. If you decide to be
a whore, all I can say is, be the best. Don’t be a funky chippie. Go with class.”
She pasted a waxy kiss on my forehead and draped her Kolinsky over her shoulders.
“How do I look?”
“Beautiful.”
She tugged the furs into a more casual drape and laughed. “You only say it ’cause it’s true.”
Her high heels tapped toward the door in drumming rhythm.
CHAPTER 19
The U.S. Recruitment Center hadn’t tried hard. The offices were at the foot of San Francisco’s Market Street, near the glamorous Ferry Building, but none of the latter’s exotica strayed to the prefab whitewash walls of the Center.
A uniformed woman offered me a Dagwood sandwich of brochures and applications and I sat down to read.
Indeed, it sounded like what I needed. Food, shelter, training and comradeship. Two years and I could buy a house for myself and my son. Might find a man, too. After all, there was a conglomeration of men in the Army. All I had to do now was maneuver between outrageous lies and delicate untruths to pass the various tests. (I wasn’t concerned about the I.Q., but about the Rorschach.) Had I just wanted to join the regular Women’s Army it would have taxed my creative lying skills, but I had gone one further. Mother had said, “Start at the top,” so I decided to try out for Officer Candidate School. I thought daily trips to the Center would help my case.
The war’s end had left the skeletal WAC staff with little to do except file papers in triplicate and dress up in privilege. For nearly a month I provided diversion. Naturally, the clerks couldn’t enjoy my artful dodging as much as I, because they weren’t privy to my secrets.
I sidled over the questionnaires and applications, double-checking, double-lying. Married … check one. No. Children … check one. No.
My cavorting brain was of no use to me at the medical examination, though. There the doctors opened my mouth wide (I needed dental work; the Army would pay), thudded and tapped and listened to my strong lungs and courageous heart. All was well.